In the construction of a building, it is challenging to provide a watertight layer, especially a waterproof flat roof or basement. Many enterprises solely provide either leak prevention or leak repair services.
Currently, it is difficult to determine if a flat roof has been successfully waterproofed until a leak presents itself internally, potentially causing damage. This is also true for roof degradation, where it is not possible to determine if the roof has degraded significantly until a leak presents internally.
The detection and location of a leak within a building is inherently difficult. A major issue with a leak presenting internally is that the source and the scale of the leak is unknown. It is particularly difficult to identify and locate the leak in time to prevent any damage to the internal structure or personal property, as well as the associated additional repair or legal costs.
Where it is not possible to locate a leak accurately, it is often necessary to replace a disproportionately large area of a roof in order to repair what may be a small leak ingress point. This approach has a significant level of risk as there is no guarantee that the area selected covers the leak (or multiple leaks) or that the repaired roof was replaced properly without any new leak points.
For example, devices are currently employed to detect the presence of a fluid due to a leak. However, these devices only detect a leak at a specified point (typically within few square millimeters) and need the fluid to come into direct contact with their sensor, which only covers a small percentage of the monitored area.